In depth: The real story behind Germany’s 22GW solar record

By Giles Parkinson on 1 June 2012

The hottest news in the solar industry in the past week was the 22.4 GW of peak capacity output from solar PV installations in Germany last week, the equivalent of 20 large nuclear or fossil fuel plants, and which accounted for around 30 per cent of the country’s capacity on Friday, and half on the following day, a Saturday, when a similar amount of energy was produced.

An analysis in CleanTechnica points out that while those figures made the headlines, the really significant number was the 189.24GWh of electricity produced on the Friday, which accounted for nearly 14 per cent of total electricity consumption in Europe’s most industrialised nation and largest economy.

As the article points out, this is actually not a rare event.

“For the last couple of weeks, the output of PV solar peaked within an inch of the 20 GW line several times, and it never peaked very low throughout the month. The lowest peak load was 8 GW, while the average peak load of PV solar was 16 GW,” the article says. “So, it seems that solar is not as unreliable as conventional wisdom and media outlets often lead people to believe. Because I can tell you that we didn’t have 4 weeks straight of sunshine here in Germany, that’s for sure.